SV Boomer

It had only been two nights on land – no more than a weekend, I thought to myself, as I packed up my precious few belongings and made for the lavish Costa Baja Resort & Marina, in La Paz - and here I was signing up for another big sail. This trip, however, across the Sea of Cortez, and down through a patch of the Pacific to balmy Puerto Vallarta, would likely be a bit easier, I imagined, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it would be shorter: three nights and four days, as opposed to my seven nights aboard SV Rosalita. Secondly, I'd heard ocean sailing was usually calmer than sea sailing, with large rolling swells, widely spaced, as opposed to smaller more frequent meddlesome waves. Thirdly, this second trip was to be on a far larger vessel - Boomer was a 42-foot downeaster, over 10 feet longer than Rosalita, a 29-foot sloop. But it was not only size that distinguished these two boats.

While Rosalita had captured my heart from the outset with her sleek form and cozy cabin, Boomer, while not as big as some of the serious luxury sailboats, boasted enough floor space for a sizable shag rug, easily room enough for a quaint dance floor (and the satellite radio and surround sound stereo to go with it). Having begun my sailing career with Rosalita's modest comforts and effective use of space (I pooped in a bucket for six days, and slept on a slim bench padded with settee cushions), I was understandably surprised by Boomer's push-button flush toilet, high-pressure hot & cold water, on-board shower, and freezer nearly big enough to crawl into. Add her sizable flat-screen TV, plush seats, and beautiful hardwood interior, and Boomer resembled more closely a kind of floating penthouse than a sailboat. Surely, this would be a smoother journey, I reasoned.

After a day or so of running around and last minute preparation, sailing vessel Boomer departed La Paz early on January 4th, a lovely clear Monday morning, and made way out around the hook of the bay within which the city is nestled. Our destination that first day was another little bay on the south-eastern tip of the Baja facing into mainland Mexico called Bahia De Los Muertos – Bay of the Dead. With luck, we would be there by sunset.

This first day's journey would afford the novice crew a chance to familiarize ourselves with the workings of the boat. Said crew consisted only of myself and another hitcher-of-rides, Eden, a lovely young woman from Seattle, who has been travelling about Central America for over a year, and who shows no signs of slowing down. Like myself, Eden had absolutely no experience whatsoever with sailing but was game to have a go. The captain of our fine boat was a decidedly memorable man by the name of Byron ''Boomer'' Alperstein.

Where to begin my account of captain Byron? A jet pilot by training – his dog-fighting prowess having won him his explosive handle – Byron is relatively new to sailing himself, having purchased his boat only a short time ago, but has quickly made himself at home. For the past few years, he’s been busy Byronizing his baby Boomer in all manner of ways – the lavish ship is adorned throughout with various tweakings major and minor, from the custom door flaps, and marble tile countertops to the wonderful underwater lights installed to reveal the denizens of the deep in on dark evenings.

In addition to being a fighter pilot and sailor, Byron also told us various stories of his exploits as a champion fencer, downhill skier, and American 100-meter dash record holder. We were in the presence of quite a well-rounded athlete, and as we would come to learn, that was hardly even the half of it.

Weather on that first day was fair at first, but as we made our way out into bigger water, conditions gradually worsened until, around mid-day, our smiles began to droop in the face of five or six foot waves flanking us and tossing the stern of the boat to and fro. Nausea was not a major issue, but for a time it was all one could do to cope with the heavy movement of the boat, and stay standing, or even seated. Captain Byron related to us later, that this day was one of the worst he’d seen on the Sea Of Cortez in his time, a body of water known for its habitually smooth conditions. Apart from that however, day one was quite a success. Only a minor blinking in and out of the ship's radar early in the day had the captain a little worried, but that seemed to have sorted itself out by sundown. We moored and supped at Muertos, as the darkness arose around us, and prepared for the second leg of the journey.

At around 9 or 10 that Monday evening, we hauled up anchor and set out in the dark of night straight into open water – it would be some 36 hours before we reached our next stop, on Wednesday morning. On Rosalita we had slept all our nights at anchor, and I was nervous and excited about the prospect of sailing all night. I had heard several people talk about phosphorescence, a term used to describe the emission of light by bioluminescent plankton, and so was pleased when Byron called us out to the cockpit shortly after we got underway to gaze at the beautiful swirls in the twilit water.

As I emerged from the cabin however, Byron, unsure if we had heard him the first time, turned to call us again, and as he swung around, landed a solid karate-chop style blow to my naked left eye. I keeled over in pain, but did not fall (this detail will be important later) thinking that worst-case scenario, my eyeball itself must have been ruptured – I tell you, this was a good chop – and best case scenario, I'd have wrecked my brand-new ocular epithelia, and would be off to the eye doctor to assess the damage as soon as we hit land. After retiring to the ship's head to examine the damage, which to my surprise, appeared minimal, I sat, deflated and somber in the dark of the cockpit, as my eye put out a steady stream of tears. A dandy start to the trip, I thought. (As it happened, the pain eventually receded to a dull ache after an hour or so and a good lay-down, and I was good to go within a day or so – I count myself very lucky.)

The first evening of watch-duty went smoothly, and our three-person crew coped quite well with sleeping in shifts, aided by numerous cups of captain Byron's delicious imported hazelnut coffee. The radar, which had threatened to give out earlier in the day, eventually did so, and so we were forced to be extra-vigilant in carrying out our watch duties at night. Needless to say, I was pleased when the sun came back around – it was one of my loveliest memories in fact, to see the sun come up over the ocean, without a speck of land anywhere in sight.

Tuesday would be our only full day underway, and although the weather was still a little rough in the early hours, things did improve later in the day as we drew closer to the Pacific. Tuesday also occasioned another brief visit of dolphins off the bow, and I am pleased to report, my first-ever whale sightings! Many were from quite a ways off, but we were lucky enough to see several spectacular jumps from relatively close quarters. I cannot quite tell you how it feels to see a creature roughly the same size as our boat emerge almost completely from the water, look over its shoulder, and crash back down onto its back swallowed by a splash of water easily as tall as a house. Suffice it to say, I was glad we were not any closer.

On this day we were also treated to our best bout of incredible stories from the captain – as we all sat around in the cockpit that afternoon, Byron "Boomer" Alperstein suddenly launched into a lengthy monologue detailing his various adventures in the realm of martial arts. There was a time, he told us, when he was so deep into the world of training and competing that it essentially consumed his whole life, and not without result. We came to learn that he had competed in, and won several world class tournaments, and also come into contact with such famed individuals as Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee. To our astonishment, he admitted cavalierly that he was, in fact, one of the few people to have ever beaten the former in competition, although he didn’t mention ever fighting the latter. (It was with great pleasure that I realized that I was now in a position to claim that I had withstood a karate-chop to the eye by the same hand that once felled Chuck Norris.) His run-in with Mr. Lee however, is no less intriguing.

In his glory days, Byron related to us, that his striking speed was such that often his blows would go un-detected by referees, and as a result he would often receive less than his full allotment of points. In order to counteract this phenomenon, he developed the habit, after having landed such a lightning-fast blow, of letting out a kiai, and posing with the striking hand raised behind the head, and the other pointing at the opponent, so as to make plain the fact that he had made a point, a gesture he would come to refer to as ''doing a Byron."

As it happens, at one particularly important championship bout, Bruce Lee was to be the guest referee, and after the match, within which Byron had been forced to indicate a few of his strikes, the former approached him personally to chat. It was not at all common at this time for combatants to pose in the midst of a bout, and Mr. Lee was curious if Byron would mind his borrowing the signature move. The captain had replied, of course, that he did not mind, and the rest, as they say, is history. If you pay close attention in watching such well-known films as ''Enter the Dragon'' you will undoubtedly see Mr. Lee doing a Byron.

The story-telling went on and on like this, for what must have been an hour, and I for one, was not about to interrupt. Eventually, however, captain Byron grew weary of showering us with florid accounts of his adventures, and we returned to the business of sailing. Before long, day had turned to night yet again, and we did our best to eat, still underway, and slowly slid into another blurry round of late night watch shifts, until finally, not long after sunrise, we arrived at the end of the second leg of our journey.

Our moorage was none other than the beautiful Isla Isabella, a famed volcanic island just off the coast of mainland Mexico a little south of Mazatlan, known for the blue-footed boobies and frigate birds that abound there, unhindered by predators. The island is also famous for having been the site of a well-known Jacques Cousteau documentary, and I can tell you, it was quite a day exploring the various trails of this tiny island peopled only by the occasional team of Mexican biology students. On one such trail, we were led down into the center of the island, to an incredible circular lake – the silent mouth of the volcano which once gave birth to the island itself – and spent a few moments in repose there, soaking up the view and the magnificent avian soundscape.

A wonderful climax to my journey! – I thought to myself. It was only a day’s sail into Puerto Vallarta now, what a pleasure it had been. We dined aboard another boat which had departed La Paz at the same time as us, and discussed the wonders we had seen that day, and our plans for the coming year.

We began the final leg of our journey well before sunrise on Thursday morning, and it was about half-way through our trip that things began to fall apart. The first stumbling block came when Byron momentarily left me to mind our course, and I unknowingly allowed the boat's autopilot to run us over the sunken (and, I might add, poorly identified) line of a local fishing boat. All the ocean to drive through, and I manage to hit the one tiny obstacle for miles around. There was no damage to the boat, but I felt poorly at having potentially lost the fishermen a day's catch.

A short while later, as I was relaxing in the cabin, Byron came down to check the engine, as he did periodically, but had neglected to earlier that morning, and upon open lifting the hatch in the cabin floor, found that the belly of the boat had taken on about two feet of water, the surface of which must have been slowly climbing for hours, and was just beginning to engulf the bottom of the boats engine! If it had gone unchecked much longer, we would have been in real trouble. Neither of the ship's two automatic bilge pumps were functioning, and the handle on the manual pump in the cockpit had broken off some time ago, so we were forced to jimmy it with a set of locking pliers, and pump away for some thirty minutes or so. We had feared that we might have to do so all the way into Puerto Vallarta, but happily, once the bilge was relatively empty, the leak seemed to stop, or at least to slow. A relief to us all, especially since the radio had begun to fail on us, and it would likely have been difficult to call for help if we’d really started taking on water.

Still later, the winds began to pick-up and shift direction, and captain Byron decided to make some changes to the mainsail. He steered the boat into the wind to facilitate this process, and asked me this time to "mind the helm," and keep our course. I assumed that this phrase meant that the autopilot had been turned off, and that I was effectively steering – something I had practiced only a little thus far. Wanting to do my part however, I obliged, and when I noticed the ship begin to drift, I attempted to correct it, but the more I tried, the harder the ship seemed to resist, and soon enough we'd fallen into a full-on accidental jibe, causing the ship to jar, and the boom to swing violently about.

This kind of event is obviously quite dangerous, and is precisely what I was meant to prevent, as captain Byron explained to me just then, doing his best to remain calm. He put us back on course, and we tried it again. Sure enough, the ship slowly began to veer to one side, and again I set about correcting it, as I thought was expected of me, grabbing the steering and attempting a counter-turn with all my strength. Again, to my astonishment and frustration, we fell into a dangerous accidental jibe, swinging the boom around, and throwing the boat topsy-turvy. This time, captain Byron was understandingly less patient, and made it clear to me that I was not meant to be steering at all, but merely observing as the autopilot kept us on course. By attempting to counter-turn, I had actually inadvertently overridden the autopilot causing it to malfunction, and in doing so, over-stressed the ship’s steering mechanism, rendering the vessel essentially un-drivable.

Suffice it to say, the captain was not impressed. Thankfully, he had been through such situations himself, and was prepared to deal it with it immediately. He cut the motor, and set about opening up the seats of the cockpit, exposing the guts of the boat, and repairing the steering cables. Next he made a few attempts at resetting to autopilot, unfortunately, in vain. We would be forced to hand-steer the remaining five hours or so into Puerto Vallarta. Byron again put me behind the wheel, this time offering a quick lesson at steering the ship, and I, determined to get back on the horse, did manage to steer the boat effectively. At least we still had the GPS, right? Unfortunately, only a few minutes later it also cut out. Ok, maybe we should try the radio. Dead. Cell-phones? No service: we’re in the middle of the ocean.

In short, within the span of about an hour, just about everything that can go wrong on an ocean voyage, did. No radar, no radio, no GPS, no autopilot, and taking on water. Even the coffee machine pooped out on us. All we knew was that we had to keep our bearing of 150° for the next 5 hours or so.

Needless to say, we were all a little morose at this point. For a short moment, it seemed like we'd spoiled an otherwise wonderful trip, and so close to finishing too. But then, an amazing thing happened - for some reason, we became happy. The wind had died down, and the waters were very forgiving. Eden and I were taking turns steering the ship, and doing our best to laugh at ourselves and our unlikely predicament. Slowly, a great sense of relief began to flood the boat as land was spotted and began to emerge on the horizon, and the next thing I knew the whales began to jump, and the Pointer Sisters began to sing out from Boomer's belly, and we passed through a bubble of cell phone service large enough to afford us a call into land explaining our situation, and we laughed and danced, and relished in what turned out to be one of the most enjoyable portions of our trip. Having come through nearly every imaginable crisis, we had exhausted all reason to be anything but jovial, and so we smiled as SV Boomer carried us into the welcoming arms of the mainland, and the Mexican sun set over the lush tropical mountaintops.

All in all, I thought this a splendid way to conclude my initiation into the world of sailing.

Plans at present have me casting my eyes inland to Mexico city and points south, and I have a feeling this country will keep me at least until my birthday toward the latter part of the month.

I miss you all very much, and send along my best wishes from sunny old-town Puerto Vallarta.

¡Hasta luego!